Breakfast with Anna was Elsa's chance to make things right. Part of her wanted to hide under the covers and never leave her bed, or even run away to the North Mountain and rebuild her Ice Palace. But despite the fear and dread, she knew she could not lose this chance to reconnect, to get her sister back on any terms.

She instructed the staff to prepare every kind of cake, candy, and pastry that Anna liked. She spent over half an hour going through her clothes, looking for an outfit that was pretty but in no way seductive. She settled on a high-necked dress in green velvet. Far too warm for the season, but she could manage. Likewise her hair was tightly bound, her makeup was modest, even her signature eyeshadow was barely visible. If she could make Anna feel safe, if she could persuade Anna to tolerate being with her, maybe they could erase last night and come back together as they were before.

She looked at herself in the mirror one last time. Look at me, she thought. I can lay waste to cities. I can shake the earth and sky. And I'm terrified of my little sister. She steadied herself on the mirror's frame, leaving a handprint of frost. Of course I am. The earth and sky don't mean as much to me.


That summer, Elsa and Anna took breakfast in The Studio, a cozy room with an enormous north-facing window giving plenty of light. It was one of the cheeriest rooms in the castle, under normal circumstances. Elsa took a deep breath, held her head high, forced a smile, and opened the door.

Her smile became real and her heart filled with hope when she saw Anna standing at her chair. She was delighted to see that Anna had taken a special effort as well. Anna's hair, clothes, and posture were flawless. Elsa had never seen her look like this voluntarily, this early in the day. "Anna! You are — " don't say 'the beautifullest' " — lovely today."

Anna executed a precise and modest curtsey. "Thank you, Your Majesty. You're looking well."

If Anna seemed stiff and formal, that was only natural. She must still have been nervous. "Why aren't you sitting down? You didn't have to wait for me."

With a bland smile and a serious expression, Anna calmly replied, "When one is dining with the Queen, one does not sit until she is seated, nor begin eating until she has begun."

Elsa began to worry. She took her chair, waited for Anna to sit, and said, "Who are you, and what have you done with the real Princess Anna?" It was a pathetic joke, but it should've raised at least a courtesy smile.

"I regret to say, Your Majesty, that I don't know what you mean."

Elsa's heart sank into her stomach. This wasn't nervousness, or withdrawal. This was a deliberate affront. Anna was trying to hurt her. And succeeding.

Elsa asked for her usual breakfast and waited to see what Anna would choose. Upset as she was, Anna must have seen the effort Elsa had made to provide Anna's favourite treats. Anna surveyed the spread of sweet pastel-coloured desserts. Without addressing the servant by name or making eye contact with him, Anna said, "I'll have a hard-boiled egg, two slices of buttered toast, and a sausage. And a cup of black tea, pl—." She had nearly said "please".

With her head down, Elsa ate, but her food was cold by the time it reached her mouth. She picked up the cream but it froze solid before she could pour it into her cup.

The silence magnified every tap and clatter of cutlery, every sip of tea. Elsa was sure she could even hear the slow, deliberate crunching as Anna chewed her toast. Anna should've been chattering by now, about something Olaf had said, or Kristoff had done, or about the ducks in the park, or the people in the market, or practically anything.

No, Anna should've been yelling, or crying, or pleading with Elsa to explain what had happened. Anything but that polite silence. "Anna. Please, talk to me. Say something."

"The weather's been uncomfortably warm lately, Your Majesty."

"Weather? Really? Polite small talk?"

"I don't know what Your Majesty means."

"Anna, this isn't like you. This isn't how you behave."

Her polite face began to slip. "It turns out one never knows what someone is really like. Isn't that true, Your Majesty? One thinks one knows how a person will behave, and then everything is turned upside down."

"Anna, please."

"And then you try to bribe me with pastries and marzipan? Do you think I'm a child?"

"No, Anna, I know you're a woman." Anna's jaw dropped as Elsa scrambled to recover. "I mean a grown woman, an adult, like me."

"Like you?"

"Please. Don't be like this."

"And what should I be like? There are supposed to be rules. There are things you do and don't do with your queen, and things you do and don't do with your sister. Well, the 'sister' rules are out the window, so the 'queen' rules are all I have left." Her anger had a trace of panic. "What else can I do?"

"It doesn't have to be this way. Can't we go back?"

"To before last night? What you did? How can you undo that?"

"I don't know. But we can talk about it." Elsa turned to the two servants. "We need some privacy."

"No, let them stay. Why shouldn't they listen in on us? After all, you listen in on them." Elsa gasped. Anna spoke mock-casually. "It's true, you know. She listens to your conversations. It's because she's sad and lonely."

"Anna! Stop right now."

"I thought you wanted me to talk! About last night. About what you — "

"Shut up!"

"You can't tell me what to do, 'Your Majesty'!"

Elsa stood, and leaned across the table at Anna. "Yes, we can."

Anna's face went pale as surprise stopped her in her tracks. Elsa had never used the royal "we" with her. Not in anger, not as a joke, not ever. She watched frost creep across the table towards her. It made the teapot shatter, a wave of steaming tea spreading across the tablecloth before it froze in place.

Anna had never believed the reports of what had happened last year in the Ice Castle. About how Elsa had almost driven one soldier over a balcony to his death, or nearly impaled another with spears of ice. She knew Elsa had defended herself, but she couldn't imagine her sister as a real danger to anyone. Let alone her. She stood slowly and backed away. "I'm sorry. I'd like to leave now." She fled the room, not stopping to close the door.

Elsa straightened up and turned away from the icy wreckage of the table. This was a disaster. She had meant to draw Anna closer, not threaten her. That's the second time in as many days I've driven her away. She walked to the doorway. She thought of turning right and following Anna, or turning left and retreating to her rooms. What's the use? I'll just make things even worse. Still, she had to try. "Clean that up," she said, waving vaguely at the table, and went to the right.

Elsa knocked on the door. "Anna, I'm sorry. Please let me in."

"Please leave me alone."

"I just want to talk."

"No. Not now. Maybe not ever."

"Let me in. I swear, I won't do anything."

"I'm begging you, go away."

"It wasn't supposed to happen like this. I didn't mean to lose my temper. I didn't mean to scare you."

"Did you mean to kiss me like that?"

Horrified, Elsa looked from side to side, but it didn't look like anyone else had heard. "I'm sorry, Anna. I never should have done it."

"You didn't say 'no'."

"I'm sorry! It'll never happen again."

"You didn't say 'no'."

Elsa sagged against the doorframe. She wanted to lie, but she couldn't. "Yes. It was a mistake, a horrible mistake that I will regret forever and never repeat, but yes, I meant to. I felt…a powerful love for you, for every part of you, that I couldn't ignore. It was so powerful that it made me think — it made me hope that you felt it too. That it was possible."

"Why? Why did you have to feel that way about me?"

"I can't help what I feel, Anna. I didn't wake up one morning and decide to fall in love with my sister. All I can say is that when I see you, or hear your voice, or think about you, I can't imagine not being in love with you."

"But what you did — "

" — was one thing. A moment, an instant, that never happened before and will never happen again. Does that really cancel out our entire lives together?"

"How can I be around you now? What can I do?"

"Anna, I love you. As a sister and a friend, I love you. I can't lose you."

"Is that all? 'A sister and a friend'? You don't feel anything else now?"

Elsa collected her thoughts. "You don't have to worry about anything else."

"That's not an answer."

"You can forget it ever happened."

"No I can't!"

"Anna, do you still love me? As a sister? As a friend?"

It was Anna's turn to collect her thoughts. Finally, "I don't know. I really don't. I don't know if I can."

"Anna, please. Let me talk to you. Let me in. You can trust me."

"How can I trust you when I don't even know who you are?"

"I'm the same Elsa you've always known."

"The Elsa I knew didn't feel that way about me."

Yes, she did. Elsa pounded on the door. "Anna, please!" She started to cry. In a strangled voice she continued, "I love you. I need to be with you, the way we used to be. Shutting me out like this is killing me. I can't bear it. I know you hate me, and I know why, but having you reject me like this is crushing me. Waiting outside your door, it's torture."

"Well now you know how it feels!" Her anger surprised them both.

Elsa touched the door for a moment, as close as she could get to Anna. Then she turned and ran to her rooms, leaving a spiky trail of ice crystals, sharp as thorns, blooming behind her.

A circle of frost had penetrated to Anna's side of her door. She touched it and felt the cold sting her finger. Why do I have to be like this? She already missed the Elsa she used to have, and was furious at this new Elsa for taking her away. But she knew they were the same Elsa, and every time she lashed out at one she hurt the other. Now she needed to run to the one person she was running away from.

She dug through a trunk of keepsakes and pulled out a stuffed Elsa doll that she had played with as a child. She sat cross-legged on the floor as she used to do, looked into its cartoon face and stroked its yarn hair. "Why did this have to happen?" she asked it. "And what do I do now?"


Elsa sat at her desk, staring at a diplomatic report. She had started reading it at least four times so far, but the sentences vanished from her mind the moment she read them. She gave up trying to read it and just stared at it. A furry frost had built up on the desktop. She willed it away, but it was getting harder and harder to control.

She closed her eyes and remembered kissing Anna. If one kiss could cost her the only love in her life, she damn well was going to get as much out of it as she could. She focused on the softness of Anna's lips, the gentle yielding as she slipped the tip of her tongue between them, the texture of Anna's tongue touching hers. She remembered the delicious tingle running from the base of her throat down between her thighs, and in remembering she felt it again. She tried to stop her memory there, to stay in that perfect moment of no resistance, before…

Someone tapped at her door. "Anna?" Elsa ran to the door and yanked it open. No one was there except a skinny servant girl with stringy black hair and a look of complete terror. Elsa looked from side to side, just in case Anna was there. She wasn't.

Elsa looked at the girl again. "What?" she said, more harshly than she intended. The girl stood quivering, hands behind her back, too terrified to speak. "Well, come in." Elsa sat behind her desk again. She remembered the girl's name from what Anna had said the other night. "You're Ingrid, Lissi's friend, aren't you."

"We work together, yes, Your Majesty, ma'am." She curtseyed.

"You have some business here?"

Ingrid struggled with her answer. "I don't know, Your Majesty. That is, no one sent me here, ma'am. Your Majesty." She curtseyed again to be on the safe side.

Elsa's usual relationship with her servants was polite and pleasant, if mutually awkward. But Elsa was already on edge. "Ingrid, take a deep breath and tell me exactly why you're here."

Ingrid stopped to think again, desperately trying to avoid saying the wrong thing. "It may have been the case that sometimes Your Majesty may have heard things we have said that we didn't know you heard. If that was the case and we said anything that Your Majesty didn't like, I would like to apologize for myself and for the rest of the staff. Ma'am."

Elsa translated in her head: "Sorry if we said anything stupid while you were listening in." The morning's events were already common knowledge. Could things get worse? "Did the staff put you up to this?"

"No ma'am, Your Majesty. Just on my own, ma'am." She paused, then bobbed another curtsey.

"Stop that. One curtsey when you enter, one just before you leave. That's it."

"Yes, Your Majesty, ma'am."

"Is that all?"

Ingrid gathered up her courage to try to speak, but only managed to shake her head 'no'.

"Go on." Elsa braced herself for another long pause.

"It may be the case that Your Majesty heard things because Your Majesty was sad and lonely. Ma'am." Ingrid's hands had been behind her back because she was carrying a hnefatafl board. She thrust it towards Elsa.

Elsa stared at the game box. Ingrid's shaky grip made the pieces rattle. Elsa didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or scream. This junior housemaid had heard Elsa was sad and lonely, and had come to keep her company. Her Highness Queen Elsa, Sovereign Ruler of Arendelle and Supreme Mistress of Ice and Snow, was being pitied by a servant girl! Her humiliation was now complete.

"Did someone put you up to this, Ingrid?"

"No, ma'am. All on my own, ma'am. That's why I didn't know if I had business with Your Majesty before, ma'am, because no one sent me. I'm sorry, ma'am."

This wasn't just humiliation. This was a masterpiece of humiliation. That girl found Elsa so pathetic that she had overcome sheer terror, on her own initiative, in order to pity Elsa in person. In a way, it was heroic.

Elsa gritted her teeth. "We value your concern, but we regret that this is not a good time. There may never be a good time. You may go."

Ingrid stood paralysed.

"You may go now."

Ingrid dropped her box and ran for the door. She stopped in the doorway, turned and curtseyed to Elsa, and dashed off in a panic.

I never should have wondered if things could get worse. They always, always can. Elsa picked up the game box. It was worn and finger-smudged, and coming apart at the corner. She put it on a bookshelf to keep it safe. Then she went to another shelf. She pulled out a handful of books and took out the stuffed Anna doll she had hidden there.

She blasted the door and froze it shut. She didn't want to be disturbed. Maybe an ice-cold doorknob would be enough of a hint.

She sat behind her desk again, knees up to her chin, brushing doll-Anna's cheek against her own. "Oh, Anna," she asked the doll, "what next? I'm sure another disaster is looming. I'd just like to know what it is so I can brace myself." The doll didn't answer, but it smiled and didn't look away, even as tears dropped onto its face.